General Fight Club

[FlowerSunRain]

Dictate is a force multiplier that works off of number of creatures you have in play. It is probably the right cost for the amount of additional force it gives. Having flash makes it a cool trick. In my environment, having a bunch of creatures in play is NOT a given and with so many decks leveraging speed, sweepers or synergy engines, decks that attempt to commit to the board need effects like this to win tough games. I think Dictate allows them to do so in a more interesting way than something like Armageddon does.

There are definitely reasons not to run the card. If tokens/little kid decks are the most common or dominant strategy you shouldn't run this card, because it becomes a bomb. It busts open mirror matches and gives unnecessary power to those decks. If you want to encourage complex boardplay you shouldn't run this card, because it makes your creatures huge and can just ignore the complexity and attack into almost anything. If you are encouraging high interaction Legacy-lite gameplay, you probably shouldn't run this card since it goes in the opposite direction.

In my experience, its a good card, but Overrun is better. I run both and am happy with their effect on the environment.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

On the flip side of the coin, token strategies are inherently problematic in my experience because they require a lot of sweeper effects to balance (which tend to be format warping if you run too many).

That great vintage Jaya Ballard flavor text pretty much sums it up.

As for the two cards in question, I ran both of them and don't like either of them. They just cost way to much mana, and put people in a miserable deck that I don't want them to run: durdle tokens.

These are the two overrun effects I would much rather be looking at:

 

[James Stevenson]

That great vintage Jaya Ballard flavor text pretty much sums it up.

Funny, it kills her too.

 

[ahadabans]

Pyroclasm is a great card. But it's narrow and it doesn't avoid the "too many sweepers" problem. And it hurts most creature based decks, not just tokens. In fact, it hurts those other decks more usually since this is a 2 for 1 against them a lot times where it might not be against tokens. What we need is a sweeper that sweeps tokens but is only single target otherwise.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

But it's probably something you'll need to design.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Pyroclasm is limited by damage though: most small creature decks should be able to beat that through some combination of growth effects, protection effects, sac. effects, LTB value effects, or ETB value creatures. Or the aggro deck can just compost the dead into a giant fish...

I'm really tempted to run death spark for these really grindy aggro matchups, but I know its probably not good enough

Lets not forget other classic tech though:




Edit: also



Like my conditional wraths to be instant speed if I can get it.

Edit 2:



One of my favorite removal spells in cube.

 

[ahadabans]

Sever the Bloodline is the right idea. Something a bit more pushed and I'd run that in a heartbeat.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I also forgot dash creatures to balance out sorcery speed wraths

 

[RavebornMuse]

I really do wish Sever the Bloodline was a tad more pushed as well to be a viable response to tokens in my format. I just started tinkering with wrath effects, so they are a little less vulnerable than they used to be, and now I feel like they're showing up quite a bit. I keep eyeing Sever wistfully, but I feel that I don't run enough duplicates of creatures to make it anything much more than an overpriced removal spell 80% of the time. Maybe someday my environ will feel grindy enough to allow it, but I'm not quite there yet.. Alas.

On the topic of removal fantasies, I also wish we had more options like Banishing Stroke, which has proven to be one of the best ways to get people to deal with pesky enchantments so far. It's quite interesting, because I see it used on enchantments quite a bit so far, and yet, when Disenchant and friends cluttered my list, they were wheeled into infinity and were only used as sideboard options - not really ideal, in my opinion. I haven't found a better solution to the issue, though, and I certainly don't intend to gut my enchantments anytime soon. I've considered Mortify but multicolour cards that are just "good/efficient" and not "fun" make baby kitties cry

 

[Chris Taylor]

More pushed version of sever the bloodline:

 

[vennythekid]

What we need is a sweeper that sweeps tokens but is only single target otherwise.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

engineered explosives is so amazing.

Also deals with the artifact/enchantment problem.

 

[Eric Chan]

 

[ahadabans]

I run all of those (except Detention Sphere which I hate).

But a card I really want would be something like:

Murdering Spree
Sorcery
Destroy target non-token creature and all token creatures target player controls.

Against non-token decks, it's just murder. But against tokens, it's practically a one sided wrath. Wizard's, print that.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Also

 

[kevthewalker]

-A-

VS


-B-

VS

VS

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

What are you trying to achieve? I don't like any of these cards, without further information.

Without knowing more, I would be inclined to go with retribution of the meek, as it at least has a cheaper cost to make up conditionality that often times will make it play more like spot removal.

I hate the way the angel plays, chosen seems really underpowered, so I guess the giant? These seem like cards that just end up extending games unnecessarly.

 

[kevthewalker]

What are you trying to achieve? I don't like any of these cards, without further information.

Without knowing more, I would be inclined to go with retribution of the meek, as it at least has a cheaper cost to make up conditionality that often times will make it play more like spot removal.

I hate the way the angel plays, chosen seems really underpowered, so I guess the giant? These seem like cards that just end up extending games unnecessarly.

-A- is looking f0r a good sweeper for aggro/token decks(other than Hour of Reckoning). Perhaps the idea of it is a bit loose to begin with?
-B- is just looking for a nice 7 drop for white control other than Elesh Norn and Angel of Serenity. There is minor support for lifegain and some blink stuff as well. So you are saying I shouldn't run any of them?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah. If you want an aggro sweeper, mizzium mortars is good, or give them sac outlets or cards that care about death triggers, so they can wipe their own board and not care. Blood artist, greater gargadon, and goblin bombardment are all classics. Or recursive threats like gravecrawler.

I dont like the secondary catagory, because they essentially represent game resets for tapping 7 mana, rather than true finishers.

 

[RavebornMuse]

A - Retribution seems interesting, and I may run it myself someday. This seems like a fine include.
B - All of these cards are really bad. Ancestor's Chosen costs too much and does nothing good. I can't imagine it ever leading to a fun game swing. Resolute Archangel is a crude, blunt object for making an entire game feel meaningless and is a woodchipper that takes in fun and spits out frustration. Arbiter suffers the same fate of being completely unfun and nullifying the game's progress. If you want an expensive life gain/control finisher, Exalted Angel fills the role well while also going into a ton of different decks and strategies.

 

[Diakonov]

A few more options in blue:




Propaganda and Ghostly Prison are both pretty fair strategies for dealing with tokens.

 

[Eric Chan]

vs

 

[Chris Taylor]

I like geists. 4 drops are overpopulated, but the solution isn't to make them cost more so it makes your curve look more even

 

[Onderzeeboot]

What Chris said. Cube is a lot faster than Khans limited as well, you want to run out your answers before you are dead.

 

[RavebornMuse]

I found Icefall Regent well-worth that extra point of mana; blue tap/bounce was a really mean deck here for a while, so when I compared the two, the 1 extra damage and Frost Titan tax on Regent made it come out on top as making the most sense to keep. It's a powerful effect and in blue it can be pretty hard to stop, so I don't mind it coming in at the 5-drop spot. Maybe it's not the best for everyone and that 4 drop vs 5 drop dilemma might be important elsewhere, but I found that, even in my format, which tends to feel pretty fast and interactive and powerful, the Regent was worth the cost; blue 5s feel a bit thin overall, and I think it coming in T5 encourages better sequencing and plays nicer, anyway, as it's more likely to tap down something super scary, without necessarily serving to choke out an aggro card's top preformer T4 the way Geists could. I've been moving away from cards that can plant a heel on aggro's throat T4 where I can, of which Geists was often an easy tool for, but if your blue section seems like it needs to boost, I can see the argument for Geists.

(quick edit for clarity above)